Pakistani Barbarism At The Border

You don't need a machete. Once a soldier is shot dead, a boot is placed on his head and a combat knife is used to hack the head off. Watch the video of Daniel Pearl's execution (the kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter decapitated by militants in Karachi in 2001)." It's a cold, clinical explanation from an Indian Army officer of how Pakistani soldiers may have decapitated two Indian soldiers they killed in a January 8 raid in Poonch, 80 km south west of state capital Srinagar.

It's the most serious violation of the September 2003 ceasefire signed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf. Both sides agreed to end the frequent artillery and machine gun duels along the 740 km Line of Control (LoC). India blames the Pakistani army for the attacks, and lists 120 ceasefire violations in 2012, among the highest since the 2003 agreement. It says Pakistanis fire to cover infiltration by militants across the LoC before snow sets in.

The guns haven't fallen silent. The knives haven't been sheathed either. Barbaric cross-border head-hunting raids, where soldiers are killed and heads brought back as trophies, are a Pakistani calling card. Such sneak attacks have till now been kept a secret by the Indian Army that has masked them through outright denials or attributed the deaths to border firefights.

On January 8, this shadow war spilled out into the open when Pakistani troops from the Baloch regiment crossed the LoC in the Poonch sector and killed Lance Naik Hemraj and Lance Naik Sudhakar Singh of the Rajputana Rifles. Both soldiers were decapitated and one head carried across the border.

Indian soldiers carry the coffin of Lance Naik Hemraj.A spokesman of the Army's Northern Command said the soldiers had "laid down their lives" to fight back a Pakistani intrusion. A senior Army official in New Delhi, too, said the bodies had been "mutilated", but admitted in private that they had been decapitated. Defence Minister A.K. Antony called the incident "highly provocative", even as Shiv Sena demanded his resignation.

The Pakistan foreign office termed the charges as "baseless and unfounded allegations". "Pakistan is prepared to hold probes through United Nations Military Observer Group for India and Pakistan on the recent ceasefire violations on the LoC," the statement added.

Click here to EnlargeThe same day, Pakistan's foreign ministry in Islamabad summoned the Indian deputy high commissioner to lodge a protest over an "unprovoked attack" by Indian forces on a Pakistani post that killed one soldier and wounded another. The implication was, the beheading was a Pakistani retaliation.

Lance Naik Sudhakar SinghBut more worrying are raids by Pakistani Special Services Group (SSH) commandos organised into Border Action Teams (BATS)-dedicated forces tasked with crossing the LoC and killing Indian soldiers. The acronym is an Indian Army coinage and indicative of how frequent the raids are. BAT raids, say Army officials, are not impulsive, but come after careful reconnaissance of vulnerable spots along the LoC.

Fidayeen attacks and cross-border head-hunting raids began after the Kargil War, which had its share of barbarity. A six-man patrol led by Captain Saurabh Kalia was captured by Pakistani soldiers in the Kaksar sector. Kalia and his men were tortured for 22 days, executed, and their mutilated bodies handed back to the Indian Army.

Lance Naik Hemraj.In February 2000, seven months after the Kargil War, the Indian Army came face to face with this new brutality. A Pakistani BAT ambushed and killed seven Indian soldiers in Nowshera in Rajouri district. The Army was shocked to discover the headless body of a soldier. The inquiry into the incident omitted mention of the headless corpse of Sepoy Bhausaheb Talekar. Subsequent interrogation of a captured militant revealed that the head of the soldier was brandished as a trophy in Pakistan. The militant, who claimed he was part of the raid, said they had played football with the soldier's head. Pakistani scribe Hamid Mir wrote that the raid was led by Ilyas Kashmiri, a former SSG commando who later headed huji's 313 Brigade. Kashmiri was killed in a 2011 US drone strike.

The 2003 ceasefire brought a lull in such incidents, but head-hunting raids are believed to have continued. In July 2011, Indian Army hushed up the brutal killing of Havildar Jaipal Singh Adhikari and Lance Naik Devender Singh of the Rajput regiment in Kupwara district. Their bodies were sent to their families in Uttarakhand in sealed caskets as they were "badly mutilated", and cremated as such. Their deaths were attributed to a firefight with militants along the border.

Last August, a story began doing the rounds in the Indian Army messes. Officers whispered of a ferocious cross-border raid by Indian troops in J&K that killed several Pakistani soldiers. The story goes that it was retaliation for the July 2011 beheadings. The Indian Army flatly denies the July 2011 incident or any retaliation to it. No reports from Pakistan suggest that the incident had occurred.

Army officials say beheadings-an ancient wartime tactic-terrorise troops and are used to collect war trophies and wage psychological warfare. Pakistani Taliban uses video-graphed beheadings against Pakistani army in Waziristan. Last June, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan released a video that showed 17 decapitated Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan army's beheadings have now turned the spotlight on Pakistan's sincerity towards the peace process. More so because the Indian Army decided to make the incident public. A senior Army official says the Army confirmed the incident as it had become increasingly difficult to conceal mutilated bodies from families.

Indian army soldiers patrol outside their camp at Gurez in Kashmir."Pakistan army and civilian administration are not in sync with each other," says Lt-General B.S. Jaswal, former Northern Army commander. The Army has turned down suggestions of approaching the International Court of Justice over the beheadings, as it says this would amount to third-party mediation in J&K, something Pakistan favours.

The Indian Government appears unwilling to escalate the incident. "Whatever has happened should not be escalated. We can't and mustn't allow an escalation of a very unwholesome event that has taken place," Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid told a press conference. But there are indications an Indian retaliation is in the offing. "Not here, not now, but at a time and place of our choosing," a senior Army official warns. It means the LoC is unlikely to be a quiet place anytime soon.